Undergraduate Courses

Words as a gateway to the human mind. How words are stored, comprehended and retrieved. How words are constructed. Word and concepts. Words and social constructs. The processing and the acquisition of words in normal and atypical children and adults.

Discourse patterns among diverse social groups in institutional and interpersonal settings; interrelationships among language practices and gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity; social structures and cultural values as reflected in language policies and practices. 

Empirical study of the sounds and structures of human language; syntax and semantics; language change; linguistic universals.

Language within cognitive science: speech physiology and acoustics, language acquisition, reading, language disorders, perception and mental representation of words, linguistic diversity and computer analysis of speech.

Study of human linguistic competence and technologies that simulate it. Grammar, parsing, text generation; semantics, pragmatics, sense disambiguation; phonetics, speech synthesis, speech recognition.

An investigation of the peoples of the ancient Near East, focusing upon the writings which they produced, their languages and scripts, and their archaeological remains.

Concurrent enrollment: MDA 140

A survey of topics in phonetics and phonology.

Duplicates credit in former LING 401a
Prerequisite: LING 210

A survey of topics in syntax and semantics.

Duplicates credit in former LING 402a
Prerequisite: LING 210

Introduction to meaning in natural language and the methods from logic applied to its study.

Prerequisite: LING 210

Introduces the breadth of possible communication disorders with a particular focus on the duties of the professionals who assist people with these disorders.  Explores both the diagnostic criteria and common interventions for disorders such as Language Impairment, stuttering, swallowing, and dementia.

Recommended Preparation: LING 210

The emergence of new languages, spoken and signed, in socio-historical situations, where linguistic input is degraded and insufficient to support the ordinary language acquisition process.

Analysis of the formal properties of linguistic expressions of number with the goal of understanding the structures that underlie language and numerical reasoning.

The interaction of language with society in countries of East Asia: language and identity, the politicization of language, language change, language and gender.

Crosslisted as LING 374

Introduction to the world’s linguistic diversity; number of languages spoken and where; grammatical structure and social function of selected languages.

Study of language as a complex natural system that requires elaborate mental computation.

Supervised, individual studies. No more than one registration permitted.

Enrollment by petition only

Advanced study of topics in phonology.

Duplicates credit in former LING 401b
Prerequisite: LING 301

Advanced study of topics in syntax.

Duplicates credit in former LING 402b
Prerequisite: LING 210, LING 302

Topics in the theory of meaning in natural language

Duplicates credit in former LING 201
Prerequisite: LING 302

Universal characteristics of child language; stages of acquisition of phonology, syntax, semantics; processes and dimensions of development; psychological mechanisms; communicative styles.

Duplicates credit in former LING 395

Experimental and theoretical aspects of how spoken and written language is produced and understood, learned during childhood, and affected by brain damage.

Prerequisite: LING 210 or PSYC 100

Analysis of atypical language and language pathologies throughout the lifespan and their relevance to current linguistic and cognitive science theory. 

Prerequisite: LING 210 or PSYC 100

Linguistic and cultural pluralism in the U.S.; distributional and structural characteristics of selected urban and minority dialects; the relationship between dialects and “media standard.” 

Prerequisite: LING 210

An overview of the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic structures of English as they relate to the theoretical literature on language acquisition. 

Prerequisite: Departmental approval

Theories of second language acquisition in children and adults; comparison of first and second language acquisition including psychological, social, and individual factors.

Duplicates credit in former LING 396
Prerequisite: LING 210

Practical classroom approaches to children’s language; relationships between writing, reading, and speaking; social and regional dialects; traditional, structural, and generative-transformational grammars. 

Not available for major or minor credit

Principles of semantics; analysis of speech acts including informing, promising, threatening, warning; linguistic analysis of consumer contracts and advertisements; readability studies.

Familiarization with the articulation and transcription of speech sounds. Also vocal tract anatomy, acoustics, speech technology, non-English sounds, perception. Includes laboratory exercises.

Principles of cognitive development, learning, and motivation applied to the development of literacy: includes tutoring a child two hours per week.

Prerequisite: PSYC 336

Overview of methods used to identify voices on the basis of their characteristic speech patterns.

The nature of communication, meaning, reference, truth, necessity, speech acts, convention, and language.

Introduction to historical-comparative word study; history of ideas concerning language relationships; types of semantic change; hidden metaphors in English word-stock.

Analysis of grammatical structures of an individual language.

Elicitation techniques and methodological principles; recording and analysis of phonological, syntactic, and semantic structures; practical approaches to procedures used in urban and rural settings.

Individual research and readings. Not available for graduate credit. 

Prerequisite: Departmental approval

Writing of the honors thesis. 

Registration is restricted to honors students

Investigation of selected topics in linguistics.